Got to say, I find this game really dull. There’s no life to it. The graphics may look good, but arguably Project Cars is better looking. The cars feel too heavy and unresponsive for what they claim they’re imitating. The braking system seems weird to me, because the brakes feel like they’re really spongy. A lot of the time you go to brake and the car keeps travelling. You can apply brakes up until the trigger vibrates which makes it better. Using progressive braking and pumping should prevent locking, but still you hear tyre squeal.
The AI seem to lack any life to them as well. Combined with what I feel is a less than brilliant sense of speed, it makes it feel…sort of boring. Higher AI difficulties make it better though and you don’t get AI going cripplingly slow through corners. Handling-wise I don’t feel connected to what the car’s doing. It goes from everything is fine to you’re spinning backwards into the wall too quickly. PCars (and I think Assetto Corsa IIRC) you can feel the weight transfer of the vehicle so you can nail corners better, get the car slow, dance on the kerbs if you want etc. Here it’s tyre squeal, understeers, lock brakes and off you go. I actually stopped playing this game to play PCars instead. There it feels like you are racing and you’ve got to pay attention, and the battles are hard fought and when you come home with that win you’ve really achieved something. Here, I don’t care. Yes, Turn 10 added music, but it just feels like AI on rails. PCars they fight each other, they bash, get it wrong into corners, fight you hard and pull out of moves if it’s going to go bad (their spacial awareness and acknowledgement of track limits could be better though).
This looks and feels like an arcade game with a tonne of tyre squeal everywhere. Engine noises are unremarkable as well, just meshing into sameness for each car. I tested the P1 across Driveclub, PCars and Forza 6 Apex. Both Driveclub and PCars showed the P1 as really fast with good brakes and very twitchy handling. This game portrayed it as a nearly un-driveable brick. The Ariel Atom should be nearly undriveable with really twitchy steering with far too much torque. Both Project Cars and Driveclub present it that way. In Forza 6 you can floor it. In Project Cars I almost torque steered it into the barrier off the line because I tried to put too much power down, and the car is very twitchy. If I try and floor it too early the car tries to spin. Where is all of that in Forza? You can catch spins because you see the weight transfer.
I also tested the Ariel Atom across all three. In Project Cars and Driveclub there was torque steer if you tried to floor it. Driveclub had more grip though, so catching spins was a lot easier than PCars, but that’s and arcade game so they can change things how they see fit. The car was frighteningly fast, a little too fast.
Also, in Forza 6 I can’t check the mirror furthest from the driver before taking a corner, moving on to the racing line etc so how can I maintain spacial awareness. Other racing games, PCars included allow me to check my mirrors and maintain spacial awareness to avoid a bash.
Project Cars and Driveclub both have a great sense of speed, something I find missing form Forza.
These are almost exactly the same reasons I didn’t like Forza and Gran Turismo back in the day. Not much has changed by the looks of it. Compared to what I already have, Apex isn’t cutting it so far. But it looks nice
